


Asymmetry and Shift

by writerdragonfly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (occurs off screen), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Deaton deserves a long walk off a short pier kind of fic, F/M, Ghosts and Spirits, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Multi, Stiles is sort of magic, Teen Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-27 20:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12590028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: “Just stay awhile and listen...”Stiles & Allison exchange realities in the moments between living and dying while submerged in icy water. There is no returning.“Boom, butterfly effect.”





	1. ONE

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelessAyase](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelessAyase/gifts).



> While plotting some details out, something super sad occurred to me. I am so sorry. Endnotes contain spoiler for the mentioned character death. 
> 
> This is an attempt to write the first chapter of a longer fic before Nanowrimo, during which I will be solely writing my novel (ugly sobbing) and attempting to stay away from fic (not likely, tbh). If you see me update, feel free to throw things at me.

 

# ONE

* * *

* * *

##  _Stiles_

 

_Later, when he has time to think about it, he wonders why he ever trusted Alan Deaton with anything._

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Stiles Stilinski was young, somewhere in that hazy four to six year old age, his parents drove out to the beach with a picnic basket and all the makings for a sandcastle and Stiles ruined the sloping towers of the next kids with a carefully aimed stream.

 

After that, they were kind of inseparable.

 

Or at least, they were.

 

* * *

 

In another life, Claudia and Noah Stilinski drove out to Beacon Falls and had a picnic near the water, and Stiles splashed mud all over Jackson Whittemore and everything was different.

 

After that, they were kind of inseparable.

 

Or at least, they would be.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday, December 10th, 2011**

 

Stiles wakes suddenly, gasping for air as he shoot himself up with freezing skin and still icy water sluicing down.

 

He is not in the animal clinic. Not anymore. He is bleeding somewhere, heavy drops splattering down his chest and his oddly dry shirt. He coughs—once, twice—before he can get enough air for his body to feel oxygenated.

 

“Stiles!” someone is saying, a heavy hand on his shoulder and a wet breath at his ear.

 

He turns slowly, one still cold, stiff hand reaching to wipe blood from a somewhat heavily bleeding nose. In the process, he realizes he’s crashed his Jeep into a tree, not seriously but enough for him to smack his face into the steering wheel without the airbags deploying.

 

And then he realizes that’s _Jackson Whittemore_ in his passenger seat.

 

_Jackson._

 

“What the hell was that? Since _when_ do _you_ have seizures?” The concerned tone in Jackson’s voice is the one reserved for Lydia and Danny, not _Stiles_.

 

He tries to answer, but his words catch in an itchy, scratchy throat. No sound leaves his throat, certainly not his lips.

 

“Stiles...?” Jackson asks again, and Stiles feels the quick build of panic in his chest.

 

He can’t breathe again, hyperventilating suddenly and painfully, his skin full of pinpricks and his chest on fire.

 

“—two, three, breathe, four, five, six,” Jackson is saying, quietly counting with Stiles, pressing Stiles’ bloody hand against his own perfectly pressed shirt to feel his steady breathing.

 

Stiles doesn’t understand. _He doesn’t understand._

 

A phone rings, loud in the relative silence of the Jeep. It’s an unfamiliar ringtone, something that sounds like country music and Stiles doesn’t even realize it’s his phone until Jackson pulls it from his overshirt pocket.

 

“Just a sec, Allie,” Jackson says into it after typing in the four number passcode without looking down, “Stiles will call you back.”

 

Somehow that’s what brings him back from the brink, Jackson answering _his_ phone.

 

Stiles still can’t speak, nothing but a huff of hissing air leaving his mouth in the attempt. His head is killing him suddenly—the broken nose or the panic attack, he’s not sure.

 

“What hurts,” Jackson asks, and Stiles thinks _what doesn’t?_

 

**-x-**

 

“It definitely needs a visit with the mechanic before it’s driven again,” Jackson says, after the blood is wiped from Stiles’ face and hands and the bleeding has stopped, “Tucker over at Armor Tire should be willing to pick it up cheap.”

 

If Stiles didn’t already know he was down the rabbit hole, through the Quantum Mirror, and two steps into Narnia, the fact that _Tucker_ from Armor Tire was still alive would have been too glaringly obvious to miss.

 

This wasn’t his world. He’d probably killed himself in some stupid, arcane ritual from Deaton and woken up in an alternate universe where, what? Jackson didn’t go on a Daehler controlled killing spree?

 

Had Jackson even _been_ the kanima?

 

More importantly, was his dad still in danger?

 

He still couldn’t speak--Stiles didn’t know, danger induced laryngitis?--but that didn’t mean he couldn’t ask Jackson anything.

 

[sent text: Is my dad in danger?]

[sent text: I need to know.]

 

Jackson pulls his cell phone away from his ear, looking at the incoming texts before going back to the conversation with, what, AAA?

 

“Thanks,” the other teen finishes, slipping his iPhone 4S back into his pocket and turning back to Stiles.

 

“Boyd was running ahead once we got the location, are you sure you’re okay, dude?”

 

 _Boyd_.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

##  _Allison_

_Later, when she has time to think about it, she wonders why she ever trusted Alan Deaton with anything._

 

 

* * *

 

When Allison Argent was sixteen, her parents moved them to Beacon Hills and when she walked into her first class that day, Scott McCall offered her a pen and it was butterflies in her stomach and love at first sight and hope.

 

After that, for a time, she believed that nothing would tear them apart.

 

She was wrong.

 

* * *

 

In another life, Allison Argent’s parents move to Beacon Hills when she’s sixteen but Scott McCall doesn’t offer her a pen. Instead, Stiles Stilinski gives her a copy of his notes and she sits with him at lunch and it’s a different kind of falling in love.

 

She wasn’t sure if they would last but the more she knew about him, the more she wanted to stay.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Allison Argent wakes to the cold weightlessness of drowning, of that last moment between living and death, when everything is fuzzy and unclear and fading away.

 

She wakes slowly, blinking away ice and water to dry eyes and the smell of burning and the sound of sirens.

 

Her entire body feels more like it’s been tightly constrained rather than soaked in ice water, but the thick chill of it remains like a cloak on her skin.

 

When she opens her eyes, she can hardly see through a dark, choking haze of smoke.

 

Wherever she is now is burning. Burning, burning, burning.

 

“Ally, it’s going to be okay,” a somewhat familiar voice says in her ears, and Allison has to struggle to turn far enough to see who it is.

 

_Erica Reyes._

 

Erica, who is dead and buried. Erica, whose blonde hair and lifeless eyes are burned in Allison’s memory.

 

“Oh, god, I’m dead,” Allison coughs out, feeling woozy and nauseated.

 

“Allie,” Erica’s voice says again, and Allison can feel her body pressed up against hers, tearing away rope that Allison hadn’t even noticed with sharp claws, “ _Allison_ , you’re going to be okay.”

 

Erica helps her stand, carries most of her weight between the chair and the open doorway that Allison can’t even see until she’s most of the way there.

 

By the time they clear the burning building, her coughing has lessened but the nausea and vertigo remain.

 

Allison stands as best she can manage, pressed up against Erica because she doesn’t want to fall. Emergency crews rush onto the scene, the two of them barely away enough to avoid being seen.

 

If this is real--and Allison doesn’t know that it is--then is Scott here too? Stiles?

 

She fumbles around in her pockets, searching for her phone, but whoever--whatever--had tied her up must have taken it. She coughs again from the effort--smoke inhalation, if she had to guess--but it draws Erica’s attention back to her.

 

“They smashed your phone when they ambushed us,” Erica says, “but it’s okay. You can use mine to call Stiles.”

 

Erica hands over a cell phone, and Allison takes it almost greedily. She scrolls through the contacts, but Scott’s number isn’t there. Neither is Isaac’s--which surprises her even more somehow, given how close Isaac had been to Erica. But she finds Stiles, calls the number without hesitating.

 

“Just a sec, Allie,” _Jackson_ says, answering Stiles’ phone, “Stiles will call you back.”

 

He hangs up, and Allison doesn’t know what’s happening, not for sure, but she knows something isn’t right.

 

“Where’s my dad?” Allison asks, her fingers curling tightly around Erica’s phone.

 

“The boys will get to them, it’s going to be okay--”

 

“Okay? Nothing is okay, my dad is missing and _you’re dead!_ ” Allison bursts out, immediately regretting the vehemence in her voice as soon as Erica flinches.

 

“What the hell--okay, calm down, Allison. What are you talking about?”

 

Allison means to answer her--she really does--but the nausea hits again, fast and hard, and Allison starts vomiting on the ground in front of them. It mostly tastes like bile and crackers, but there’s something else there she can’t identify. Something bitter and gross.

 

“Oh, fuck,” Erica says, her skin somehow paling further, “Deaton gave you wolfsbane? We need to take you to the hospital!”

 

“Isn’t that only dangerous for werewolves?” Allison tries to ask, but her lips are oddly numb and the words slur around her lips.

 

“Allison? Allie?” Erica’s voice kind of fades out after that.

 

* * *

* * *

##  _Melissa_

She had known Alan Deaton socially for years, but if she had known what he was capable of, she never would have let him close to her baby.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She had met Claudia and Noah Stilinski when their sons were young and it was a friendship that she thought would last forever.

 

And for awhile, everything was good.

 

Then Scott was bitten, and everything changed.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time she met Claudia Stilinski, she was about to die and her wide-eyed child was holding his friend’s hand so tightly that his knuckles were white. She met Noah Stilinski later that night, still in a bloody deputy’s uniform, moments before his wife died.

 

She would never forget the way he sat on the edge of her bed, his son curled up between him and his wife, and the ugly sobbing that came after.

 

That night, she asked Rafe for a divorce.

 

* * *

 

 

Melissa Delgado had worked the emergency room for years, first as a nurse and later as a nurse practitioner when necessary. She enjoyed her job most days, even the messy ones, because helping people was in her blood.

 

The past year had been a somewhat difficult one, a bevy of strange cases and strange wounds ending up calling her to duty. It was good, at least, that Scott spent most of his time at home instead of running around the town doing god-knows-what that resulted in so many odd injuries and poisonings. It was good that he wasn’t anywhere near those kids that were murdered, even if it made her a little ill to be glad of it.

 

Of course, when the pattern became known-- _virgins were being murdered_ \--she worried that he would be caught up in it anyway. Scott was a likable kid, sweet if a little naive, but he’d never had a girlfriend and she was fairly certain he hadn’t slept with any of his friends.

 

And then the fourth murder broke the pattern anyway, and she stopped thinking about the fact that she wasn’t sure if Scott was still her innocent little boy.

 

She’s covering a shift for Nancy in the ER when Erica Reyes--looking far healthier than the last time Melissa had seen her--bursts right inside, ignoring the check-in station between the waiting area and the floor with a hard hip check into the door, barely in time for Melissa to smack the button for disengaging the lock.

 

But it’s not Erica who needs help, though Melissa had expected that. Erica’s arms--looking far stronger and defined than Melissa remembered--are full of another girl, all dark hair and too pale skin.

 

“Please, I need help!” Erica’s voice is loud but it’s only because Melissa knows her that she knows the teenager is terrified. Her knees are trembling but her fingers are locked tightly around the teenager in her arms, protective and worried in turn.

 

Melissa takes charge without waiting for a response from the head nurse, the woman just then coming out of the treatment room of a regular patient.

 

“Set her down right here,” Melissa says, making way toward the nearest bed and shoving away the curtains. Erica sets her down gently and it’s then that Melissa can see the girl is probably older than Erica herself.

 

“Do you know what happened?” Melissa asks, as she’s joined by Jackie, who gently prods Erica to a nearby chair.

 

“W--aconite poisoning, he told us to trust him but then he made her,” Erica says, and Jackie barely gets the emesis bag to her before Erica is vomiting into it.

 

Someone _poisoned_ a teenager girl, someone they trusted. Melissa feels the fury building in her chest, but does her best to focus it on saving her instead of ruining who had done it.

 

“I brought her as soon as I could,” Erica is saying--Erica is _crying_ , “Is she going to be okay, is the baby okay?”

 

Melissa wants to say yes, that everything will be fine, that this girl will survive.

 

But she doesn’t know, and says _nothing._

 

**-x-**

 

“Do you know where her parents are? We’re not getting any answer on their cell phones,” Melissa asks Erica, who is curled up so small on the chair in the waiting room. Erica unfurls, dark smudges from wet makeup around her somehow hopelessly wide eyes.

 

“Her mom is dead,” Erica says, her tone bitter around the words, “but her dad... I need to go, she still has her dad!”

 

Melissa reacts before she’s totally aware of it, one hand lightly on Erica’s arm. “Erica, we need her father’s permission to--”

 

“ _You don’t get it!_ ” Erica says, pulling away, eyes still wet, “He can’t give you permission, that psycho bitch _took him_ and Deaton _promised_ Allie and Stiles would be okay and she’s probably _dying_ , and I have to save her dad, that’s what she would want.”

 

“We need to call the police then—”

 

“What can _they_ do? She has the Sheriff and Allison’s dad already and they’re probably dead and not even that stupid FBI agent can find them! At least we know what we’re up against!”

 

“You’re just a--”

 

“ _No_ ,” Erica Reyes says, standing up to her full height in a way that makes her look far taller than before, “I’m _not_ just a _kid_.”

 

Before Erica spun away, Melissa would swear her eyes flashed yellow.

 

* * *

* * *

 

##  _Isaac_

Isaac never trusted adults anyway. They never did right by him.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time Isaac Lahey actually speaks to Scott McCall is after he’s bitten. After he’s got wolf running through his veins.

 

The first time he speaks to Stiles Stilinski, he’s much younger and the other boy’s mother is dying.

 

Isaac had a broken arm.

 

* * *

 

 

In another life, Isaac and Scott meet when they’re children. Best friends forever, they say. But somewhere in middle school, they stop talking as much. In their sophomore year, they have a fight and Isaac never does see Scott after that.

 

Two days later, his father dies.

 

Three days later, Sheriff Stilinski finds Isaac’s body locked in the freezer.

 

 

* * *

 

The thing about life after is that your priorities are shifted. You don’t worry so much about what other people think of you when you’re dead.

 

There’s no point—the living can’t see him now and even if they could, he doesn’t care what they think anymore.

 

Isaac lived and then he died and now he’s here, just another spirit clinging to the world he isn’t ready to give up.

 

The others tell him that he’ll move on eventually, that they all do. By now, he’s been here longer than most but there are some that still linger. Morrison from down the road says he’ll only leave once his daughter dies, and he’s been here since 1983 if Isaac is to believe him.

 

“Some things are stronger to hold on to,” Morrison says one night, joining Isaac as he watches Ms. Delgado start supper for Scott.

 

Isaac doesn’t know that Scott’s the reason he’s holding on.

 

At first, Isaac thought it had to be. For a long time, Scott had been his lifeline. His first friend, his best friend.

 

The boy who Isaac loved.

 

But Scott had always been able to make friends easily. A social butterfly, even with his asthma.

 

Scott moved on after Isaac died. Isaac watched him do it and it didn’t hurt like Isaac thought it would.

 

He wanted Scott to be _happy._ That was all he ever wanted. Giving him up should have let him move on if that’s why he was still tethered.

 

But Isaac couldn’t shake the feeling like he was missing something, and until he found it, he didn’t think he was ready to let go.

 

So he didn’t.

 

**-x-**

 

“Be careful,” Melissa Delgado says, hugging Erica Reyes tight against her chest.

 

Erica holds on just as tightly, just for a minute. Isaac can see it in the color of her fingers, and the way her mouth wavers.

 

“Take care of Allie,” Erica replies to Scott’s mom, biting her lip.

 

“I will. You call me the minute you find her dad, yeah?”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” Erica says, and Isaac thinks, just for a beat, of staying behind. Of watching over the woman he had always wanted to be his mom.

 

But then he thinks of Erica Reyes at fourteen, at twelve, at ten. Of her fragile body spasming on the ground while everyone watched and laughed and Isaac did nothing to stop it because he was just as scrawny and always afraid.

 

Erica looks fierce when she steps out of the hospital doors, like an avenging angel as she stalks down the parking lot to a car that Isaac _knows_ belongs to _Allison Argent_.

 

 _“Take care of Allie,”_ Isaac remembers, but he can’t remember having ever seen the two of them together when he was alive.

 

Isaac barely has time to reach the car before Erica’s spinning out of the parking lot.

 

She smacks a number into her phone before hitting the speaker button, and as she waits for the call to connect, Isaac can see that her eyes are glowing gold in the dark car.

 

“Erica, what’s the sit—“

 

“Allison is in the ER getting who knows what done _to save her life_ and I haven’t heard back from Jackson and Stiles yet, so please fucking tell me something good, goddamnit!”

 

“Derek’s girlfriend is gone,” and Isaac finally recognizes the voice as Boyd-of-few-words.

 

“Thank fuck,” Erica _growls_ and Isaac doesn’t know what the hell he's stepped into but somehow he can’t help but... _want_.

 

This is the kind of adventure he used to read about in books, the kind that Scott would scoff at but Ms Delgado would leave on the coffee table. Where there were princesses and magic and werewolves and sometimes the good guys were bad but happy endings were _real_.

 

“I’m almost to the tree, they’re still alive. Was it the Alpha?” Boyd asks a beat later, and Isaac has no idea what that means but it’s obvious that Erica does.

 

“ _No,”_ she answers vehemently, “it was fucking Deaton.”


	2. TWO: Noah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered continuing my four part chapters, but ultimately I think this part, at least, stands super well on it's own. That being said, I may have the other three parts of Two up together with the next update.
> 
> I am actively working on this, along with a few other projects, but if you've seen Ionic, then you know I've decided to write and update when I feel like and stop stressing so much about the finished product and the timing and all that jazz. I don't know when I'll update next, and I'm okay with that now. That being said, I do have some headway into the next POV for Two at least (Chris Argent, whoop-whoop!), and this fic is plotted out through part six (which the fact that i've plotted anything is hilarious.)
> 
> Please enjoy it if you want. :)

# TWO

##  _Noah_

 

_If he’d believed him from the beginning, would this have happened?_

 

 

_Some things don’t change at all. Noah Stilinski loves his kid in any reality._

_(Every reality.)_

 

 

**Saturday, December 10th, 2011**

 

Noah Stilinski didn’t really believe in magic. Oh, he believed in fate-- _Claudia,_ after all, was undoubtedly his soulmate. But spells and faeries and _werewolves_ , that was taking it a bit far.

 

Wasn’t it?

 

Stiles seemed so _insistent_ , persistent, that the part of him that shot him down so quickly began to falter in the moments afterward.

 

It was true that Stiles had been distant lately, that he had been hiding things, keeping secrets. He’d thought it was all teenage drama until the thing with Kate Argent, and Matt Daehler, and the bruises on his face after that game when he’d gone missing.

 

There was too much he didn’t know about what Stiles had gotten himself into. He had thought, maybe, drugs. But there was no relation apparent to Argent _or_ Daehler, and all he’d found in his son’s room was evidence that he hadn’t been taking his actual prescribed meds on the regular.

 

He had seen too much _human_ darkness in the world to believe in magic, but ultimately, as he sits tied up to load-bearing stud in some dank, cold root cellar thick with the scent of rotting flowers, he doesn’t know what to believe.

 

The woman--because he doesn’t believe that she’s actually Jennifer Blake anymore--appears again, looking even more ragged and worn than before.

 

She’s carrying Chris Argent over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, something she hardly looks strong enough to do. He hits the dirt floor with a smack, and the woman wastes no time in pulling him over to the stud facing Noah and tying him up as well.

 

Once she’s finished, she turns back to Noah, her eyes narrowed.

 

“Your son has no idea what he’s in for, meddling with my plans. I had a good thing going and no one suspected a thing, but he just had to _butt in_ . I’ll wager he gets that from _you_.”

 

“ _Don’t you dare put your hands on my son,_ ” he says, putting as much into it as he can manage.

 

She laughs, and the sound of it makes his stomach drop, “And what, pray tell, are _you_ going to do about it? You’re in _my_ control right now, Stilinski, and as soon as I get my hands on another sacrifice, you’re all going to _die_.”

 

“You think I’m afraid of you?” he asks her, keeping his temper just barely in check.

 

“ _You should be_ ,” she says, and for a brief lingering moment, her beautiful visage fades away to something much more grotesque. Colorless skin marked with horrible, jagged blood red scars slicing across her face, her eyelids gone entirely, and the skin around her mouth violently ripped away to reveal her teeth and gums.

 

Her delicate features return from the inside out, like a flower unfurling. But having seen her true face, he can’t _unsee_ it. She leaves without another word.

He also cannot brush off the reality that magic exists, not after that. Perhaps, if Stiles hadn’t said anything, he would have written it off as some kind of airborne pathogen hallucination.

 

He doesn’t know.

 

He does know this.

 

Stiles is his _kid_ and he’ll be damned if he lets that witch touch him.

 

He pulls and twists as much as he can but he can’t quite get the right angle to loosen anything.

 

Chris though, she didn’t spend a ton of time getting him tied up. Maybe he...

 

And, well, honestly, if Stiles was mixed up in that demon’s bag of crazy, he had no doubt Allison was right there with him. Two peas in a pod, their kids were. He never expected Stiles to stop fawning over Lydia Martin but damned if he and Allison didn’t adore each other.

 

It takes more maneuvering and quite a bit of yelling before he manages to wake Chris, who blinks an inordinately high number of times before he seems to be able to focus. It was probably from the way his skull smacked against the ground with the rest of him, but it could be anything else that happened before.

 

“Noah...?”

 

“She surprise you too?” Noah asks his friend, but Chris looks confused for a long moment.

 

“I... don’t remember...” Chris says, before he turns away, taking in their surroundings.

 

“What do you remember last?”

 

“We were... going to meet for lunch?”

 

And they _had_ been.

 

“That was yesterday,” Noah tells him, but Chris is already nodding as if realizing that himself.

 

“That was Thursday, Noah. Before _you_ went missing.”

 

“You remember more?”

 

“A little, it’s... fuzzy. Friday night, I was trying to... and then I woke up here.”

 

The murders, the kidnapping, _keeping him alive_ , the face, _another person_ , another day.

 

Stiles had said the first three were virgins, but Noah hadn’t believed him. The rest, clearly, hadn’t been.

 

But, _maybe_ , he was onto something.

 

Sets of three. The Great White Pumpkin had said as much, “ _as soon as I get another sacrifice_.”

 

He’d never believed in the occult, and he’d stopped believing in any kind of magic when Claudia died.

 

Clearly, his thoughts on that didn’t matter.

 

“The Eclipse,” he says to himself, but there’s a tiny, surprised sound from Chris Argent at the words.

 

“She’s sacrificing us before the eclipse...” Chris says, and when Noah looks at him, he can see the way his eyes harden into something sharp and clear. “That’s when the werewolves are at their weakest.”

  
_Werewolves,_ Noah thinks, _clap if you believe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, yeah, tbh the whole reason this is posted on it's own is that last line because I love it.

**Author's Note:**

> Due to the nature of the changes in the background, I realised that someone was going to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it without it feeling unrealistic to me. So, if you’re skipping to the end because you have a need to know who dies, I am sad to say that it’s Isaac Lahey. If you’ve read through to the end of this first chapter, then you should already know this since part of it is in his perspective. If not, well, the more you know?


End file.
